James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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or by email:gurneyjourney (at) gmail.comSorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.

Permissions

All images and text are copyright 2015 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.

However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The camera drifts through trippy dreamscapes, as ornate golden orbs and tendrils gently morph in shape, pattern, and color.

(Direct link to video) The animation is by Julius Horsthuis, who imagines that "It's 1596 AD and a ship is frozen in the deep arctic. No help is coming. The Navigators and Cartographers aboard, suffering from hypothermia and frostbite are starting to hallucinate."

Fractal-powered software is Mandelbulb 3D. Music is "Soul Medicine" by Mari Boine.
If you liked this, check out his "Phenotypic Sarcophagi."
Via CGBros.

Rose worked with incredible energy, beginning the painting with a phthalo green oil crayon. The strong color kept flooding into mixtures as she went along.

She's impetuous, dynamic, and experimental, very exciting to watch. She and Robert Liberace got great results, but I failed to take a photo of their paintings. Can someone send me scans of the finals?
-----Rose Frantzen
Video footage provided by Scott BurdickPortrait Society

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Watercolor painter Mary Whyte gave a spellbinding live demonstration at the Portrait Society of America conference yesterday here in Washington, DC.

Whyte is beloved for her sympathetic portrayals of the working South, and her images of the African-American Gullah women of Johns Island, South Carolina.

She captures her subjects in everyday actions, sweeping the floor, sewing on buttons, or putting on shoes. "All my life I've been interested in the in-between moments," she said. As she laid on wet washes of color before an audience with most of the 700 attendees, she described how she tries to "hold onto the biggest brush you can for as long as you can."

Taking a break from painting her longtime model Tesha Marshland, she described her process for creating her compositions, and she showed sketches done from her imagination in advance of shooting reference. She said she uses photos "for information, not for direction."

"After I have an idea for a painting," she explained, "it's important to think how can I say more? Sometimes that means taking things out of a painting."

Saturday, April 26, 2014

I sketched Jeffrey Hein from the side of the main stage as he painted a two hour demo yesterday morning at the Portrait Society conference here in Washington, DC.

The day was filled with lots of demos and programs. In the afternoon, I gave a presentation about practical tips for location sketching using all sorts of media from colored pencils to watercolor, gouache, casein, and oil.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Hohepa, astride his tyrannosaur, wades across the shallows of Buckthorn Creek to parley with an invading force of shield strutters. His action prevents the destruction of the hatchery at Moss Valley, but leads to the Armakians breaking off their alliance. Hohepa later becomes the mentor of Blake Terrapin. Watercolor on board by James Gurney, 2012.

An emissary riding a T. rex faces off against a phalanx of robotic strutters. This is one of the new paintings featured in the expanded edition of Dinotopia: First Flight, which releases today.

The book tells the story of Dinotopia's origins, with dramatic stories and artwork from its Age of Heroes. It begins with an unabridged republication of my 1999 book.

The second half of the book includes a bonus of over 45 new images, including never-before-published storyboards, concept sketches, and production paintings, plus new characters, backstory notes, and a cinematic treatment all downloaded from my creative archives.

You can preorder a copy on Amazon if you like. But if you live in the USA and would like to order directly from me,you can cancel the Amazon order (as long as it hasn't shipped yet) and I'll send you a personally signed copy. I'll also be doing a quick sketch in every copy.

As an additional incentive, the 25th, 50th, 75th, and 100th copy ordered from me will receive a tipped-in original storyboard, such as the one above, which I drew in 1997 when I was planning the book.

Preorder a copy on Amazon or order Dinotopia: First Flight Anniversary Edition now from JamesGurney.com or Dinotopia.com.(USA orders only, because it costs too much to ship overseas. International customers: what most people do is to order a book to be sent to a friend at a US address.)

The newest edition of Illustration magazine has the entire 80-page special issue devoted to Walter Baumhofer, who painted dashing heroes and damsels in distress for the pulps and the slick magazines. Pick up a copy at your local bookstore or at the Illustration website.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Nowadays we might show a prospective client a folder of images on an iPhone. But in 1860, William Trost Richards (1833-1905) created this "Painter’s Sampler," to show what he could do.

Thirteen miniature canvases are mounted up together. They show a range of conventional landscape compositions. I can just image him saying... "I can paint you a Hudson River sunset, or a summer meadow, a nautical, or a cabin in the woods, or a forest interior...."
-----
This comes from a private collection and was exhibited at a Hudson River School exhibition called "American Scenery" at the Dorsky Museum of Art

Saturday, April 19, 2014

His digital students sketched them from life, gathering inspiration for an assignment to create a poster for the reptile house at the zoo.

The animals came from The Drawing Zoo, a company in the Baltimore area that specializes in bringing exotic animals into schools for drawing. The animals move, but not too much, and they don't mind the attention. They're experienced with people and completely non-aggressive.

The team from the Drawing Zoo has experience in both art and animal handling, and their subjects are well cared for. They say that "snakes, spiders, lizards, frogs etc. make great models because they are easy to transport, handle and care for, both inside and outside of the classroom."

Friday, April 18, 2014

Yesterday we attended the preview opening of Focus on Nature XIII, the exhibition of natural science artwork at the New York State Museum in Albany.

The show presents 91 illustrations by 71 illustrators, hailing from 15 different countries. Many of the artists attended the event, some traveling all the way from Australia and Spain.

The art is juried in on the basis of both artistic and scientific merit, and the show includes both digital and hand-painted images.

Artists were invited to share some stories about their work. Dorie Petrochko brought an actual horsehoe crab exoskeleton as she explained the creature's unique biology and how its blood is drawn for the medical industry. "This creature sacrifices a lot for science," she said. It's the oldest living fossil, and has survived twelve mass extinctions.

I was surprised and thrilled that my painting of Kosmoceratops for Scientific American won a jury award. I described how I made a maquette of the dinosaur to study the cast shadows and the dappled light in the forest interior.

The show also includes my original gouache preliminary study for the Australian dinosaur stamps.

All the attending artists had a wonderful opportunity to visit behind the scenes at the museum, and we had a look at the Native American artifacts in the archaeology collection.